Overnight the body’s motor slows down so you can sleep. Breakfast gets it going again. By not eating breakfast, you run your motor on empty, because you haven’t switched on the motor correctly. The body trying to conserve the energy it has - and as far as the body knows, it is entering starvation mode, and needs to conserve all the spare energy it has in store. It doesn’t have the mechanism to understand that you chose to start your engines without topping up the fuel tank. By not eating breakfast regularly, the reduction in metabolism can cause an increase of 3kg / year. Making up with a larger serve at lunch time means you’ll only gain 2.5kg / year. Think of the progressive total, from skipping breakfast. You should try and eat SOMETHING, but not just coffee or juice.

Lots of fruit, vegetables, breads and cereals are great. They're easy to prepare, easy to eat, easy to digest. A breakfast high in fat takes longer to digest, and therefore to get the motor started.

Best choices include cereals - made from oats, rice, flakes, or mixtures of grains and add dried fruit as a sweetener instead of sugar. But be careful of toasted mueslis as they use fat as part of the toasting process and it is wsually the bad fat. The one that clogs the arteries. With dietary fibre, be careful. Choose the large flakes. Small flakes can cause constipation, or make it worse.

Spread on the bread - can you see the bread through the spread? If you are using a spread, do you need butter or margarine as well. Jam only contribute 250kj (60C), so have the jam with no butter underneath. If you find this difficult, reduce the amount of fat between the toast and the jam - it’s a cultural habit we have, and one that causes lots of health problems and maintains weight we may not need

Don’t let the body go hungry. Listen to it. Hunger pangs mean it needs more fuel. By not answering the call, the body’s conservation system kicks in. Keep feeding it, it will become very inefficient at using the fuel we keep feeding it, and the excess food will end up in the toilet bowl instead of adding to the auxiliary tanks.

BREAKFAST ON THE RUN

Pack the night before and snack on the way out the door, or on the way to work;

Pack healthy stuff for morning tea so you don't have a severe snack attack at 10am.

Missing breakfast affects their concentration during the late morning hours. It also means during the growing spurts, that two meals a day has to provide enough E for the day. Smaller children do not have the stomach capacity to hold enough food to provide enough food to provide the E. Children need to see their parents eating breakfast, and the process of organisation for them to be comfortable, and have the time for eating this meal.